To Those Who Wait
by mon-petit-pois
Summary: "We're moving out... We're not taking prisoners." The circumstances for changing the circumstances are not prime, so the call is made for Tony's mission to be delayed by a few days. They have no idea how much is at stake, and when they arrive at the Somalian camp later than planned, it might already be too late.
1. Chapter 1

In Tony's career, he's run into many situations where time is everything. He's familiar with races against the clock and the sense of urgency that comes with it. He knows what it's like to cut it close, to arrive just in time to prevent a catastrophe. He's seen bombs diffused at the literal last second, people pulled from a building moments before its collapse, and he's seen would-be-killers thwarted not an instant too soon.

So really, he should have protested harder when Gibbs insisted that they must delay their mission by _two whole days. _He insisted the timing was wrong—_Do you want to get rescued from that camp or not? The pieces aren't in place yet—_but Tony hated the thought of waiting any longer. Saleem was dangerously close to moving his camp, and they were pushing it. Wait too long, and they would be forced to start all over.

The desert wind whips across his face as he drives the jeep over the uneven, bumpy terrain. There is a feeling of anxiety and dread—or Hinkiness, as Abby would put it—settling in his stomach as strong as the sweltering sun itself as it beats down on his shoulders. He and his right hand man do not exchange many words; the sand has a tendency to get into places he would rather it not be. It feels like an eternity before they finally arrive at the destination.

"That does it for Quadrant Whiskey-Four," McGee comments, and Tony anticipates what he knows—_hopes_—is coming. Any minute now, men with guns should pop out from behind buildings, their sights trained on the two trespassing foreigners.

Any minute now.

A few seconds more.

Just give 'em a sec.

Nothing.

Tony and McGee look around the abandoned camp, and Tony's dread morphs into anger.

"_Goddammit!"_ Tony snarls, whirling on McGee. "We're too late. I _knew _this would happen."

McGee sighs in frustration. "Damn. We were so close."

"And now?"

"We still need to search the place. They moved out, but they might've left something behind that tells us where they've gone," McGee reminds Tony, whose face is a picture of angry defeat. "Look, I know you're angry. I am too. But if we're ever going to get this guy…"

"I know, Probie, I know," Tony sighs, running a hand down his face. "Let's go. Watch my six."

Guns drawn, the two agents take off into the nearest building, but find nothing save empty rooms. Shouts of "Clear!" echo through the concrete structures and out into the open air, where they get swallowed up by the wailing wind. They move, building by building, through the camp, finding nothing but abandoned stone rooms and dirt in the first four structures.

The fifth is the game-changer.

The first door they open inside the fifth structure has a heavy bar that locks it from the outside, and Tony wonders if this is the prison structure. McGee slides the bar over and swings the heavy wooden door open on its hinges. The door groans as it reveals the insides of the room it was charged the guarding, and Tony enters with his gun drawn.

His arms lower as he takes in the concrete room he is standing within. It is not as empty as the other rooms they have stumbled across. There are two wooden chairs settled in the center of the dirty floor, and a small table sits off the left side. Sunlight filters in through a semi-circular window on the far wall, and the rays bounce off the ground, illuminating the floor and calling to attention the reddish-brown specks that decorate it. The stench is nearly overwhelming.

It smells of death, and Tony has to steel himself from thinking about all of the men who have been tortured and killed in this room. He finds himself thinking, for the first time, _at least Ziva is dead._ He never thought he would be grateful for such a thing, but he knows that, had she not been killed at sea, she would have come here, and he does not want to think about even the possibility of Ziva experiencing the horrors that undoubtedly took place in this room.

"Tony. Let's go," McGee prompts, and Tony blinks, once, then twice, and turns on his heel. They exit the torture room and walk down an L-shaped hall way, coming at the end to a T-shaped intersection. They make a left and walk five meters before making another left, down a dark corridor that smells similar to the last.

At the end of the short corridor is a door, one similar to the last. Tony thinks that perhaps they have stumbled upon another torture room, and when McGee slides back the bar and pulls it open, he braces himself.

A strangled cry escapes his mouth, and he knows that no amount of preparation could have braced him for what he saw.

It is not a torture room, it is a holding cell, which is roughly one fourth the size. There is a small, two pane window high on the back wall, and it is the only source of light. The room smells worse than the last. The overwhelming odor of bodily fluids has fermented in the desert heat and collected inside the small, unventilated, cell, and Tony nearly gags.

However, such thoughts hardly occupy his conscience. He is focused, rather, on the prone form lying in the center of the cramped quarters. Ziva's face is clearly visible.

She rests on her back, her head lolled to her right. Her hair is matted and filthy and spread across the dirty ground. Blood soaks the material at her right shoulder. She is not moving.

"No. No, no, nonono…" Tony practically whimpers as he springs into action and crosses the distance between them in two paces. Knees hit the concrete ground and his hands are frantic, first settling on her chest and then her cheek and then her neck for a pulse.

"Is she breathing?" The shaky, almost terrified voice comes from McGee, who has knelt down in a similar manner on the other side of Ziva.

Tony places his ear next to her mouth, apprehension and dread filling every pore of his body. "I… I don't really hear anything…" He cannot stop the panic he feels coming on. "Call someone! Get help!"

"I am!" McGee yells back as he pulls their long-antennae mission cell phone out and dials.

Tony's fingers grope frantically at her neck, feeling to feel the blood beat in her veins so he can know she is alive. His desperate hands find nothing.

"_I can't find a pulse!"_

"Start CPR. Get her breathing. MedEvac's on the way." McGee does a much better job remaining calm and steady under pressure than Tony does.

Tony's rests his hands on her sternum, shoving thoughts of how damn _skinny_ she is away from his mind. He throws his whole weight into it as he begins chest compressions.

_One. Two. Three. Four. Five._

"She might be in hypovolemic shock… there's a lot of blood. It looks like a stab wound to the shoulder," McGee informs him, which does not help the shaking of Tony's hands.

_One. Two. Three. Four. Five._

Pause.

_One. Two. Three. Four. Five._

"Don't make me live without you, Ziva, come on. Wake up," he growls, horrified at the thought of this second chance he'd never anticipated slipping through his fingers like this.

_One. Two. _

"Wake—"

_Three. Four. _

"—up!"

_Five._

Tony leans down over her and takes her chin in his right hand, plugs her nose with his left, and places his mouth over hers. Thoughts of how her lips taste of dirt and salt and copper—_blood—_are quickly pushed away. He tries twice to breathe life into her. Nothing happens.

_Onetwothreefourfive._

_Breath. Breath._

"Breathe, Ziva!" he yells, frustrated and desperate.

_Onetwothreefourfive._

_Breath. Breath._

"Tony. Stop. I think… Yes. There's a pulse. It's weak but it's there. And her chest is moving," McGee observes, sighing with relief and holding a hand up to the man about to attempt to resuscitate her again. The Probie's eyes are locked on Ziva's chest, which is ever so slightly moving up and down.

Tony nearly chokes on the relief that fills him. He sits back on his heels and moves his hands from her chest. His right wraps around her ghostly fingers, and he wonders if so much emotion has ever before been expressed through such an action. His left hand returns to her face, where he wipes the blood and dirt and sweat off of her cheek ever-so-gently.

"Wake up, Ziva," he begs, his voice choked. "Please wake up. We're going to take you home."

They have come not a moment too soon. Left for dead, she probably would have been so if they had been even a few minutes late. Who knows how long she's laid in this oven of a cell, without food or water and masses of blood leaving her body every hour.

Saleem obviously wanted her to suffer, and if Tony thought he was bloodthirsty before, it was nothing compared to how he feels now.

He does not expect her eyelids to flutter, so when they do, he inhales sharply and strokes her cheek. "There we go. You're safe. You're going to be okay. It's over," he soothes her. Her eyes, however open, remain unfocused. She looks around the room with blank eyes, and Tony wonders what she is seeing. Dehydration-induced hallucinations are his guess, and he hopes that she is seeing anything but this wretched desert prison.

"Tony, we need to carry her out. MedEvac will be here any minute, we need to be outside so we can get on the chopper," McGee prompts. He releases the grip he has on Ziva's hand. "You got her?"

"Yeah, I've got her," Tony affirms, sliding his right arm under her knees and his left under her neck. He murmurs an apology as he jostles her injured shoulder when he lifts her up. McGee tucks her limp head onto Tony's chest.

Ziva just stares blankly ahead as Tony carries her farther away from her filthy, cursed prison.

As they step out into the windy desert afternoon, Tony wonders if this is the first time in nearly four months that Ziva has had a taste of fresh air. He hopes it will help her still-shallow breathing.

His arms are tiring, and he sighs with relief as he hears the far-off sound of helicopter blades beating the air. It grows louder and louder and what used to be a speck off in the distance grows until it is the size of the buildings around him. He turns his head away to protects his face from the whirlwind to sand the chopper conjures up as it lands thirty feet from where the trio stands. The black door is thrown open and two men with sunglasses and ear protectors jump out, gurney in tow. Tony is woe to let Ziva go, but he eventually relinquishes her to the paramedics. When she is situated—seeing her lying against the white fabric makes her look a hell of a lot worse—the two EMTs roll the gurney back to the chopper and beckon for Tony and McGee, who are holding their shirts up over their noses, to follow.

The door slides shut and what is left of the damaged Three Musketeers takes off into the sky.

_A/N: Reviews would be lovely. One more chapter, I believe._


	2. Chapter 2

In her thirty years, Ziva David has become more familiar than most with waking up in a hospital. She is well accustomed to the slow process of waking her body from sedation—the heaviness of her eyelids and limbs, the struggle to make sense of the gargled speech around her, as well as the confusion that comes with it. The feeling of a needle in her arm and the sound of a heart monitor off to the side are not foreign to her. From falling out of trees as a child to being shot in the line of duty, she has had her fair share of experiences with coming out of sedation.

Never before has doing so shocked her as much as it does now.

The first thing she is aware of is the beeping, sharp and metronomic. She is not nearly conscious enough to identify or even contemplate its source. Other sounds accompany it—somewhere in her mind she knows she's hearing a quiet conversation—but she can only focus on (her annoyance at) the steady beeping.

When she finally registers what it means, the beeps pick up in speed.

_Alive. Oh, God. Alive._

The quiet voices, which before faded almost unnoticed into the background, stop abruptly. There is shuffling of feet, a gentle pressure on what she decides must be her hand, and the words start again. This time, she knows they are directed at her.

Her worn out and beaten down brain can't make sense of them, but there is a sharp pain in her chest when her subconscious recognizes the timbre and cadence of Tony DiNozzo's voice.

The beeps go ever faster.

She is dead, _she has to be._ Ziva David was a dead woman from the moment she set foot in that camp.

_No,_ a little voice reminds her, _you were a dead woman the second that plane left the tarmac one short._

She remembers dying—it is not something easily forgotten. She remembers hearing the death sentence she waited so long for at the lips of her torturer—_we're not taking prisoners._ She clearly recalls the ease with which he buried his knife to the hilt in her shoulder—_my last gift to you._ The parting words spoken before the thick wooden door slid shut for what she knew to be the last time are ingrained in her memory—_you will rot away in this room, slowly and painfully._

After that, there was only heat, pain, hunger, thirst, and the subsequent delirium. The knowledge that she was truly, utterly, helplessly _alone_ cut sharper than any blade still lodged in her torso (which she eventually decided was worth the energy to pull out, since she would die quicker that way).

It took longer than she would have liked, days rather than hours, but Ziva remembers eventually succumbing to the cool, peaceful embrace of death.

She. Should. Not. Be. Alive.

The phrase "dead woman walking" comes to mind, and she realizes how utterly perfectly that describes the life she led (_is leading?)_. Since the moment she came into this world, she was only ever headed for Somalia.

Only ever destined to abandon—_NCIS—_and to _be _abandoned—_everybody else._

The words around her are starting to make sense, even in her complete and utter confusion at this shocking turn of events. First and foremost, she recognizes her name, spoken with so much emotion that she feels her (annoyingly) resilient heart pang. There is feeling returning to her limbs and facial muscles, and soon it is almost painfully clear that there is a hand grasping her own.

Drowsy eyes give their first attempt at opening. Considering she never expected them to open again, Ziva thinks she does pretty well. The little light that seeps through the crack she has managed does not form into anything her brain recognizes.

She is still so close to giving up.

_So tired._

But then he speaks, and she can finally understand.

"There Ziva, you almost had it. You can do it, open your eyes."

She has never heard Tony DiNozzo speak like that. For four years they worked side by side, day after day, case after case, and never once were his words so gentle and… unabashedly hopeful.

Somewhere in the confines of her brain, she curses him for that, for how can she give up now when she knows it means shattering his heart once again?

"'Ony…" she mumbles, her speech gargled and weak and hardly even there.

Someone's hand is cupping the left side of her head now, stroking back her hair. "Yeah. It's me."

She makes another attempt at opening her eyes, and they flutter a little before falling almost completely shut again. His hand gives hers a light, reassuring squeeze. It takes a few minutes, but eventually she's able to keep her eyes open, and the room around her takes shape.

Then there is Tony, sitting on the side of her bed, smiling as if he's glad to see her awake—as if she never broke his heart.

A doctor enters, and he says words that Ziva does not follow nor care about. They do not register with her brain, and after he checks her over, he says more words, then leaves.

They are alone again.

"Welcome back to the land of the living."

She licks her dry lips. "Why?" she forces out, her unused voice hoarse.

He frowns as he hands her a Styrofoam cup of water. "Why what?"

Ziva takes a sip from the cup, holding back a moan. The water is clean and cool and she has forgotten what that's like. Clearing her sore throat, she responds, "Living. Why?"

She thinks she sees a bit of heartbreak infiltrate his eyes, but he covers it quickly. "Because we weren't about to let you go."

There is not one thing Ziva can think of that is an adequate response. There is not one thing that she has done to deserve this. She flounders, visibly.

"You're going to be okay," he promises seriously, before adding, "Gibbs won't letcha be anything but." Guilt surges through her at the mention of her former boss's name.

She has done so very many things wrong by them.

Another sip of water, then, "I remember dying." The words obviously chill Tony to the core, she can see it in his eyes. He swallows past it.

"Guess you didn't die hard enough then," he jokes, and Ziva almost takes comfort in the predictability of his coping methods. "Good movie. Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia. _Yippee-ki-yay, motherf—"_

"Tony."

He sighs. "When we found you, you didn't have a pulse. We started CPR, eventually found one, then MedEvac-ed the hell outta there. That's really all there is to it."

"We?"

"Me and the Probie," he replies.

She stares at him. "It seems you were very lucky."

He sighs, running his hand through his unkempt hair. "God, Ziva, you have no _idea._"

Ziva does not have the energy to press him further. Despite having just woken up, she is exhausted.

"How long?"

There is pain in his eyes. "About three and a half months."

She feels like she has had the wind knocked out of her. "I slept for _three and a half months?!" _

His eyes widen. "No! No, that's how long you were captive, I thought you meant… No, you were asleep for three days," he assures her.

"Where are we?" she inquires, almost afraid of the answer. If he says Israel, she knows she would be better off dead.

If he says Israel, then that means her sins are too great.

"Bethesda. They patched you up in Mogadishu pretty well, stabilized you for the flight back here. They kept you sedated for a while, you were pretty…" he takes a deep breath. "It was pretty bad."

She looks away from him, the pain in his gaze too much for her to handle. "I am sorry, Tony."

"That's a conversation for another time," he replies. "Not now. Later. Not now."

Ziva nods, understanding. "Has my father called at all?"

The look on Tony's face tells her all she needs to know.

"I see."

"Ziva…"

"No," she responds, shaking her head, "it is fine. He left me for dead, and I… have made peace with that. I do not want to see him."

There is silence, and guilt in Tony's expression that Ziva does not understand.

"You are feeling guilty," she states. "Why?"

He shrugs. "Waited too long." She cocks her head to the side.

"What were you waiting for?"

"The extraction team to be in place."

"I thought you were the extraction team?" she asks, frowning a little.

Tony chuckles humorlessly. "No. We were the… extract-ees."

She is confused once again. Nothing he is saying is making any sense. "I do not understand."

"I wouldn't expect you to. I never explained. You drew your own conclusions."

She takes a deep breath. "You were not there to rescue me." The words cut through her like ice.

"No, we weren't," he confirms, and she feels a small piece of her die.

_They were not trying to rescue her._

Before she can reply, he continues.

"We were there to _avenge_ you."

At first, she does not understand—and then she does, and all words fly from her mind. There is a full minute where she cannot form a sentence, cannot focus on anything but the fact that they _risked their lives simply to avenge her._

"You… thought I was dead...so you...?" she trails off, her voice on the brink of cracking.

"Mmhmm."

"I do not know if that is incredibly sweet or incredibly foolish," she admits.

"Me neither."

"You could have died."

"We all die sometime."

"It does not need to be for a stupid reason."

He almost looks offended at that. "You call vengeance… stupid?"

"When it is vengeance for someone who does not deserve it, then yes." She says it with all the dignity she can muster.

"Do not say that," he demands, his voice fierce.

"You were _willing_ to give your life in vengeance of a woman who was nothing but cold to you?"

"No. I was _planning_ to," he snaps back at her, and all of a sudden the world freezes. She does not know how to respond to such a thing. "Like I said, we all die sometime. Figured I might as well take some of those bastards with me."

"_Tony_…"

"Look, Ziva, it's like this. I know that you went to Somalia with every intention of giving your life for your cause. I did the same. Neither of us expected to leave that compound alive, but you know what? We both did."

"It is different for you," she insists. "You…now have a reason to…"

"Oh yeah, and you don't?"

"Do not pretend you know what it is like, Tony," she growls. "Do not pretend you know what it is like to spend three and a half months preparing yourself to die, _begging to die_, and then essentially _dying._ Do not pretend you understand how hard that is to come back from, because you don't. You cannot know."

"You're right, I don't. But I know that you don't really have a reason to _die_ anymore, either," he points out.

"I do not have a _home_, Tony! My father does not care if I'm alive or dead. I am not welcome in America. I am… alone."

Now it is apparently Tony's turn to be angry. "Don't you dare," he responds, his voice low and dangerous. "You're not _alone._ Not by a long shot. What the hell am I, or McGee or Gibbs or Abby or Ducky for that matter? You've never been alone, not since you joined this team. All you ever had to do was ask and we'd be there. And who the hell said you weren't welcome in America? Why do you think we're in DC? You think we just brought you here so we could ship you off on the next C-130 headed for Israel?" Tony's little rant shocks her, and even makes her feel a little bit guilty.

"I did not…"

He sighs, shoulders slumping. "Look, we're not going anywhere. _You're_ not going anywhere. Everything will sort itself out, you'll see, okay?"

"You cannot know that for sure."

"Call it a gut feeling."

"Are you sure you are not just hungry?"

"Well, I _am_ that," he responds, grinning cheekily.

"I have not eaten in…" she trails off, not entirely sure that her estimate of one week is correct, "…a while."

"What food do you want the most?" he asks, a mischievous smile lighting up his face.

"I am not sure that the doctors—"

"Screw the doctors, I'm taking care of my injured partner. Is berry mango madness okay?"

The words themselves seem to make her mouth water. "Yes. And a waffle from that one place…" Her memory goes blank for a second, but luckily Tony knows just what she is talking about.

"Alright. Got it. I'll get McDeliveryBoy right on that." He pulls out his cell phone.

Ziva smirks, before turning a little more serious. "Can you tell him to come here? I want to thank him."

"Yep. Sure thing, jelly bean."

"That did not rhyme."

"Close enough."

"So when you correct my idioms I am never 'close enough' but when I correct your rhyming skills you _are_?"

"Mmhmm," Tony responds as he puts the phone to his ear.

"You are insufferable."

"And that's why you love me," he adds a second before McGee picks up the line and they start talking.

It is then and there that Ziva David decides that her partner (because he always will be _her partner)_ is a very easy man to love.

And she realizes that, at some point during their conversation, she stopped hating the fact that her heart is still beating.

* * *

_A/N: I'm not sure if I will continue this or not. Maybe if the mood strikes. Thanks so much for the wonderful feedback for the last chapter! Please let me know what you think of this one!_


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